Howto read VMFS 3 with a Linux LiveCDif you need help with tasks like described here feel free to contact me ulli.hankeln@mightycare.de For the video I used a recent Ubuntu 64bit LiveCD available here: ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso example scenario:the ESXi-host has two disks - the Linux LiveCD detects them as:/dev/sda = drive with the ESXi installation and a small datastore /dev/sdb = drive with a large ESXi VMFS3 datastore /dev/sdc = a USB-drive that will be used as recovery-target /dev/sdb1 = the VMFS-volume on the local disk /dev/sdc1 = the NTFS-volume on the USB-drive commands used:sudo passwd = set the root password su = change users ls = lists the content of a directory ls -alh = lists the content of a directory with more details mkdir /mnt/ntfs = create a directory where we will mount the NTFS-formatted USB-drive mkdir /mnt/vmfs = create a directory where we will mount the VMFS-formatted ESXi-datastore mount -t ntfs /dev/sdc1 /mnt/ntfs = mount the NTFS-drive vmfs-fuse /dev/sdb1 /mnt/vmfs = mount the VMFS-volume mkdir /mnt/ntfs/2k8 = creates a directory for the 2k8 VM on the USB-drive cp /mnt/vmfs/2k8/* /mnt/ntfs/2k8 = copy the files to the NTFS-volume on the ESXi-admin host the result looks like this |